February 20 – April 14, 2017 at Seattle Presents Gallery in the Seattle Municipal Tower
The Seattle Presents Gallery will showcase a new installation The Nightmare Quilt (Revival) 1988-2017 by Beverly Naidus this spring.
In 1988 Naidus created a dual sided large scale quilt of 54 panels from canvas scraps and twine. Originally displayed on a bed in a gallery, one side of the quilt depicted her fears for the future and concern for the present. When visitors lifted up sections of the quilt to see the other side, they discovered her dreams. Too unweildy to move individually, visitors needed to ask for help to uncover the entire quilt of dreams, physically manifesting the artists’ intent to convey that we can’t achieve our collective dreams for the future unless we work together collaboratively.
In the Seattle Presents Gallery, Naidus created 27 new panels of nightmares and dreams, updating the quilt to speak to our community’s current fears, hopes and dreams. She also enhanced the installation to create a stronger atmosphere for the quilt, adding in a mixed media wall of tattered clothing and textiles.
Beverly Naidus, associate professor at the University of Washington Tacoma and an interdisciplinary artist, writer and facilitator of an innovative studio arts curriculum, has been creating interactive installations, digital projects, artist books and narrative drawings for over three decades. Much of her work is audience-participatory, inviting people to tell their own stories in response to the theme being explored. Inspired by lived experience, topics in her art focus on environmental and social issues, including how we are individually and collectively affected by racism, climate change and multiple forms of systemic oppression. Her work has been exhibited internationally, in mainstream museums, university galleries, alternative spaces and city streets. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame, numerous essays on socially engaged art and pedagogy and some recent pieces of speculative fiction. She has taught at several NYC museums, Carleton College, Cal State Long Beach, Hampshire College, Goddard College and the Institute for Social Ecology.
Seattle Presents Gallery will be open to the public on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 12 – 2 p.m. and by appointment at 206.684-0182 or email arts.culture@seattle.gov. The Office of Arts & Culture, in partnership with the Office for Civil Rights, is committed to providing equitable support for arts and cultural organizations. The Seattle Presents Gallery features both emerging and established artists and curators and encourages public engagement in arts and cultural experiences that explore ideas surrounding equity and social justice.
Installation photo courtesy the Office of Arts & Culture.
